Frederic G. Cassidy (chief editor), Dictionary of American Regional English, volume III: I–O. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1996. Pp. xv, 927.

Abstract

It's tough to review an interior volume of a continuing, multivolume work like DARE, especially when previous volumes (1, 1985; 2, 1991) have been so thoroughly reviewed and so well received – and when many readers of LiS may already be familiar with the series. Reviewers of the first volume could comment on the history of DARE, its goals and methodologies, the unique problems encountered during its development along with their solutions, and its innovations – such as the clever maps which still give a recognizable US, though skewed according to population density. Reviewers of the final volume will be able to look back over the entire series, casting a critical eye on the overall success of the endeavor and evaluating its success as a work of scholarship. Nevertheless, I will do my best to concentrate on the volume at hand, although some glances forward and backward are inevitable.